In 2001 we funded a research team at the Institute of Psychiatry to undertake a project on time trends in adolescent mental health. Researchers analysed data from national surveys undertaken in 1974, 1986 and 1999, looking at trends in the same kinds of problems in UK adolescents over the whole 25 year period.

The results, published in 2004, showed that the mental health of adolescents in the UK declined overall across this period. Children in their teens in the 1990s were more likely to show a range of difficulties than those in their teens in the mid 1970s.

Following this research, we established the Changing Adolescence Programme to examine the reasons for this increase and to understand better how the lives of young people have changed over the last 30 years.

A commissioning group of academics with expertise in the area, along with Programme Head, Dr Ann Hagell, commissioned six research reviews, each relating to a specific aspect of teenagers lives: